Based On Survival
by Jewel1001
Summary: My take on what could have happened between Zane and Aster during their time together in Dark World. Proshipping.
1. Prologue

Hera - Okay, so this is set between episodes 137 and 141.

Hazeru - This is also my first attempt to write with these two as the main characters, so you'll have to bear with me for a couple of chapters.

Hera - We hope it'll be okay for everyone. This is our take on what could have happened between Zane and Aster during their time in Dark World; our take on what could've happened if they'd got together then.

Hazeru - So that does mean this story contains Proshipping.

Hera - Anyways, enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

Prologue

In a world like this, it was a given that you had to take the company of anyone you could trust, whether you actually liked them or not. Now, the two of them may not have been very close, but they did understand that they each wanted the same thing: to find their other friends and then to find a way back home. Therefore, from this common knowledge sprung an uneasy alliance.

At first there were arguments; lots of them. Both of them were proud men and both possessed certain qualities which made them rivals for who got to be in charge and make the decisions. A leader would have been natural among a larger group, but considering there were only the two of them, at least for the time being, they just played it by ear and neither one was officially the decision maker. The main advantage of this was that whenever they ran into a rogue group of monsters, the blame could be equally shared; neither of them was immature enough to try and blame their own misfortunes of the other in a world such as this one.

And so, as they found themselves more and more lost in an unfamiliar dimension, they argued less and less, until light teasing was as bad as conversation between them really got. It was an uneasy friendship, if it could really be called that; neither of them understood their relationship, to say the least, considering that they had started out as not liking each other much at all. Now, though, they had been forced to spend time together and more importantly to work together; whether they liked one another or not, neither could say any longer that they did not trust the other.

Dark World was proving – more and more so as time wore on – to be incredibly dangerous. Bands of monsters would encounter them every so often, and while the smaller ones were easily crushed, it was generally easier to just evade the larger groups that could contain up to fifty or sixty monsters. They were both strong duellists, but realistically there were only two of them, and only one had a fully functioning heart.

At first they had wandered, but for the time being – until they understood whether or not the Supreme King was truly Jaden Yuki or not, for the idea seemed logical but so unlikely – they waited in this large house.

The house they were currently occupying was large, old-fashioned (by their standards, not by Dark World's) and for the most part pretty empty. It had been Zane who had located it; considering that it was abandoned and, judging by its state of cleanliness, had been for some time, they hadn't thought it too rude of them to more or less move in. After all, it was very much a temporary measure; they had been there for all of two days.

However, there was no telling how long they would have to remain there.

Now that the Supreme King had come, the monsters had become far more organised; gone were the small and poorly organised groups, replaced now by the King's dark army. He had structured them into a deadly force, one that even two such duellists as themselves couldn't realistically fight against on their own. And since they had no idea where their friends could be found, they were on their own and ill-equipped to fight an entire army. Even if they won each and every duel, they would collapse from exhaustion before they'd battled half the army.

Their best aim, they had decided, was to wait for a smaller scout group to find them. They had located one such group before they'd come here, which had consisted of just two goblins which had been easily defeated, but that was before they'd understood more about the Supreme King, so they hadn't thought to question the goblins further.

Now, they lay in wait for another scouting group to come their way – and for sure they would, while there were remaining duellists _somewhere_ in this world – so that they could obtain the information they needed, before they decided on their course of action.

Needless to say, just waiting for the King's scouts to come to them made them restless, irritable and edgy. It was risky for them to venture out, and so they did so only very rarely; only when supplies were needed. The house had obviously been abandoned for some time, there being no food or water inside, and the furniture dusty or stained. It meant that, besides improving their decks, there was very little to do; both of them grew bored and irritated.

Or more accurately, Aster got bored and Zane got irritated.

Zane often muttered to himself about running out of time, although Aster didn't know what he meant by this and never got a straight answer if he bothered to ask. Though Aster did suspect it had something to do with Zane's heart, since he had learned that the other's heart was weakened – not that Zane told him why this was the case – and that it caused him pain. Once he'd been told this, he recognised it as the truth, considering how frequently Zane would clutch at his chest following running or duelling or other such strenuous activities.

However, even though Aster realised that Zane's heart was pretty unhealthy, it never became a topic in any of their conversations; besides that, Zane didn't want to talk about it and Aster didn't want to hear about it. For the most part, they talked about the world they were in, about the ways to go about finding their friends and about the likeliness of Jaden truly being the evil King; neither of them wanted to believe it even though they both feared it was the truth.

And so, because fate – destiny, one of them might have said the previous year – had decided that the two of them would be alone together in the dangerous world in an abandoned old house, Zane Truesdale and Aster Phoenix were thrust into an uneasy friendship formed on a foundation of necessity and safety in numbers.

And this is where our story begins.

Hazeru - We hope this is okay. Not all details might be 100% accurate, so if they're not, then we apologise.

Hera - Hopefully update soon. No flames, but please R&R.


	2. Chapter 1

Hazeru - This should contain more detail than the prologue.

Hera - Hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

Chapter 1

As strange as it may seem, the two had somehow managed to fall into an unofficial routine.

They awoke early and either floated around the house, doing odd chores here and there and practicing their own duelling techniques, or, less frequently, going out scouting. Zane did this more often – if they split up, which was a rarity in and of itself – since he proved to be better at it; his darker clothing made it easier for him to glide around unnoticed in the cover of the trees Dark World provided, and his natural quietness made it easy for him to pick up information without alerting the guards or people to his presence. This was fine with Aster; it meant less work for him. However, it also left him doing more of the household chores, something he had never really had to do before and could not say he enjoyed.

Cooking had become a necessity for them; so had cleaning and other basic chores which neither relished but which had to be done. They shared this work reluctantly, and got it done, but that didn't mean either of them took any sense of accomplishment from it in the way they did whenever they managed to pick up information from one source or another about Dark World.

Their routine was simple enough: wake up, do chores, possibly go scouting and then return, cook dinner, and then go to bed. It was the simplest of routines for them and it was little wonder that, after six days of this, they were both restless and unwilling to continue, even though their low profiles were essential to their overall plan.

The simplicity of their routine wasn't the only undesirable thing for them; neither of them was exactly willing to share a bed with the other either, but it proved to be the best way to do things after a few days there. It wasn't that the house came equipped with only one bed – it had, in fact, a double bed and two singles, all in separate rooms – but more that there weren't many blankets and besides, the coverings they did find were very thin and of poor quality; they certainly did not provide the necessary warmth for Dark World nights, which were very cold, especially in a large house with cool air and no electricity and thus no heating.

Zane and Aster shared a bed at night simply for this: the body heat. It was the best way of keeping warm that they had found and, after a couple of nights, the two found that their initial discomfort over this situation had more or less faded away in favour of keeping warm.

/

If there was one awkward time of the day, it was most certainly mealtimes. Breakfast was no longer a meal that they took part in and lunch was often just a sandwich – or something similar to, at least – which was easily consumed on one's own. However, it was the evening meal that proved slightly uncomfortable, when the two dined together on whatever they'd managed to cook up – ingredients in this world were far from what they were used to, but they took what they could.

Zane quickly learned that his companion wasn't enthusiastic about eating in silence, and so usually they found themselves making conversation, more often than not about the world they were in and about what to do next.

And so it was under these exact circumstances that the two found themselves on their seventh night in the house, eating something which Zane had cooked, that closely resembled a stew of some kind, and talking simply about their situation.

"Did you find out anything from those people we ran into earlier?" Aster queried, referring to the group of runaway humans whom they had encountered earlier that same day – he had not spoken to them since he had been searching through an abandoned village at the time; it had been Zane who had interacted with the frightened people.

"They mentioned a patrol that was heading here in the foreseeable future" Zane replied. "If they happen to be close to the Supreme King, we might just be able to find out more about his true identity."

Aster nodded in understanding; he realised that Zane was, of course, referring to whether or not it was actually Jaden who was the King.

"How big is the patrol?"

Zane closed his eyes and said, "They didn't say. I assume that means a fairly large number."

"Whatever, we'll be able to take them on however many there are" Aster replied, fairly confidently, as he toyed a little with the food. "What I'd like to know is just how big the actual army is."

"Maybe our new friends will be able to tell us."

Aster smirked at the same time Zane did; their 'new friends' was, naturally, a reference to the oncoming patrol, which both were pretty certain that they could wipe out easily enough. After all, they hadn't yet come up against anyone who'd given them anything more than basic trouble. Goblins, mostly, and they didn't qualify as skilled duellists in the books of anyone who could classify as a pro.

"Shall we face them here or elsewhere?"

"Let them come to us."

An expected reply. The two fell into a thoughtful silence as they continued with their meal; it wasn't tasteful but it was edible, and that was all they could hope for given the rather unusual ingredients they had to work with. It had quickly become clear to them that pork, lamb and beef weren't really the favoured meats – if they were available at all in this desolate place – and they had recently been consuming meats which came from goodness knows where; they weren't sure they even wanted to know which animal some of them had come from. The only thing they had ever queried was whether or not the meat was human flesh, which the seller had denied that it was. Aster wasn't initially satisfied with such a reply, but after hearing from Zane that humans supposedly tasted like pork he was fairly convinced that their meat was not human flesh: it had tasted more like duck that had been overdone with spices and out-of-date herbs.

And it had been better than whatever they were eating now, which was edible but pretty tasteless and undesirable.

After consuming only half of said meal, Aster rose from his seat and began to wash the bowl in the sink which had been earlier filled with hot water for this purpose. Zane tossed his empty bowl into the water alongside its partner and departed from the room, leaving Aster to take care of the washing up, as was their agreement; whenever Zane did the cooking, Aster did the washing up, and vice versa.

It was strange how easily this routine had been established. It was even stranger that the two had, thus far, managed to stick to their own set rules without argument.

As the hot water worked its magic in cleaning the dirty dishes, Aster let his mind wander.

If there really was a patrol heading there way, and especially if it was big in numbers, then the two of them had best prepare for what was coming. After all, just taking them down did no good whatsoever; they had to use them to gain information to the best of their ability.

He smirked a little into the water; he could hardly wait.

Hazeru - Hope that was okay.

Hera - Please R&R.


End file.
